


The Vulnerable

by Crowlows19



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Batbrothers (DCU) Bonding, Fluff, Tim Drake Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:27:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22500205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crowlows19/pseuds/Crowlows19
Summary: While on Tim-sitting duty, Jason sniffs out a predator among the Wayne Enterprises staff. Nothing explicit.
Relationships: Tim Drake & Jason Todd
Comments: 25
Kudos: 1168





	The Vulnerable

When Jason came back into the fold, he hadn’t expected to suddenly be playing the big brother card. Back when he was Robin, he was primarily known as Dick’s little brother. Or replacement. It depended on who you asked. He had never been a full-fledged member of the Titans; he had been too wild for Dick to trust on the team and Bruce had wanted to maintain what little control of his behavior he could.

When he had come back to the family, he was suddenly cast as Tim’s older brother who was wild, crazy, and too cool for words. It disturbed him how much the teenage girls liked the bad boy image. Even the smart girls seemed to fall for it. The only good thing about it all was how annoyed Tim was every time someone told him how cool his big brother was. He would scowl and tell them that Jason still cried every time Mufasa was pushed off the cliff. 

To his frustration that only seemed to endear Jason even more to his fellow teammates. 

Regardless, Jason felt very uncomfortable when Dick said everyone was going to be out of town for three or so weeks for various reasons and he was in charge of not only Gotham but Tim. 

“Tim will be fine on his own,” Jason argued into the phone, looking through his fridge for a snack to go along with his beer. “He’s not like me. He won’t ride a motorcycle through the Manor like I did every time Bruce left town.”

“I know that,” Dick said and Jason heard the telltale sound of beakers. Dick was in the lab. “But he’s still a kid. Just make sure he eats a sandwich once in a while. Got it?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Jason replied with a roll of his eyes. “I got it, Big Bird. I’ll make sure the kid doesn’t overdose on Redbull.”

“Thank you,” Dick replied but was immediately distracted. “Damian, put that down!” 

The line went dead. 

00000

Tim was technically on his own for a few days before Jason could wrap up his current Outlaw case and hoof it back to Gotham. When he got there he went straight to Wayne Industries and Tim’s office. It wasn’t quite as big as Bruce’s had been but was definitely befitting of Tim’s status.

Whatever that was.

His seventeen-year-old, noodle-limbed brat of a brother even had a personal assistant. He didn’t know why, but that thought just made him want to giggle. The very pretty woman told him to wait. Jason raised an eyebrow at her. 

“What’s he doing?” Jason asked. 

“I can’t tell you that, sir,” she said, and she seemed sincere, but then she glanced at the closed office door, and then leaned in towards him. He was expecting gossip; he got quite a different conversation. “But I do need to tell you something.”

She was fully aware of who he was. Jason may have been accepted back to the family publicly, but he was still the least known child. He didn’t go to any of the charity functions, club openings, business things, this thing or that thing. However, the high-level employees knew more about the family than anyone else in town. 

“What is it?” Jason asked, knowing by the look on her face that what she had to say was not something pleasant. 

“I was here a few years ago when Tim was an intern for the first time,” she told him quietly. There was a panicked look in her eyes like she knew she was crossing the line but when he visibly watched her gather her courage, he knew that she at least believed that crossing the line was a good thing. “There was a Senior Director, Calvin Johnson, who oversaw a lot of the interns. He was here when Tim was; that first time around when he was twelve.”

She licked her lips nervously.

“What are you trying to tell me?” Jason asked, feeling cold. 

“There were rumors,” she said, hesitantly. “Nasty rumors. Mr. Wayne never heard them or there would have been an investigation. We know that for certain. And the interns never officially reported anything either.”

She was rambling now; trying to tell a story without descending into workplace gossip, something that could land her in a disciplinary hearing with Human Resources. She pressed on anyway. She was determined to warn him. Jason felt a cold chill down his spine. 

“Well, I remember that Tim never liked Johnson much,” she said. “He was transferred to Hong Kong for a special project but now he’s back. And he’s in there with Tim.” 

She looked at him imploringly but Jason didn’t know what she wanted him to do. 

“You should barge in there,” she finally said blatantly. “Don’t let me stop you; don’t sit down and wait; just barge in.”

Jason didn’t have to be told twice. If there was one thing he knew how to do, it was how to barge into places he was neither wanted nor expected. He was beyond the assistant and into that office so fast Roy would have joked that he’d developed superspeed.

“Sir!” came the very well acted, indignant response from the assistant.

At first glance, there was nothing wrong going on behind the closed door. Tim was on one side of the desk and this Johnson character was on the other. They were clearly working, but Jason knew Tim. Something was off. His eyes were too heavy-lidded as he held his paperwork in front of his face. He had a clenched jaw and his shoulders were tense. 

But in the second that it took him to look up at the intrusion, recognize that it was a brother, and relax, Jason knew that something was wrong. Tim never relaxed in Jason’s presence. He was always expecting a prank, a knife wound, or his complicated coffee order with a side helping of Jason’s spit. 

He didn’t like what he just walked into. There was something wrong. His instincts told him to extract Tim from the situation. He couldn’t fully say why. His training just kicked in. 

“Lunch, Timbo,” he ordered. “Now.”

“Sounds great,” he responded and then looked at Johnson. “We’ll pick this up at our next meeting.”

Johnson scowled but took the dismissal anyway.

00000

Lunch with Tim that day was an entirely useless exercise. The kid picked at his food, not looking up from his plate, and barely responding to Jason’s prodding questions. Timmy’s eyes drooped and he was dangerously close to falling asleep on his cheeseburger. Jason got no answers from him. 

So, the next morning he brought the helpful assistant a fancy coffee and said, “Tell me everything.”

And did she ever. 

Calvin Johnson had been in charge of the interns for years, not because he was the most qualified to run such a program or even because his department really needed the extra hands, but because he was the person who was always willing to mentor a young person. That should have been the staff’s first clue, according to the assistant. It wasn’t though. 

Johnson had been in charge of dozens of children of all ages by the time Tim had been accepted into the exclusive and highly coveted Wayne Enterprises Young Professional’s Internship Program. Johnson had been his direct supervisor but with Bruce Wayne’s eye so focused on Tim, it was unclear if Johnson had been inappropriate. At least, according to her. 

But there had been plenty of rumors among the lower ranks throughout the years. Mostly passed down from outgoing interns to the incoming interns, like it was some perverse inheritance given to each class as they came to the program. There had been one intern who’d trashed Johnson’s car; something that had been covered up by the HR department.

“Bruce would have been all over that,” Jason protested. And Bruce had been, but the intern had also been removed from the program that same day and then Bruce’s back had been broken. Jason knew this to be Bane’s fault; the assistant thought it was the result of a car accident. 

Sometime after that, Johnson had been transferred to Hong Kong for a special project that had just been wrapped up and he’d been recalled. Wayne Enterprises was closing ranks following the sudden disappearance of Bruce Wayne and the very unorthodox decision by the remaining family to install, not Dick Grayson as had been presumed, but the seventeen-year-old high school drop out, Tim Drake. Jason held no doubts that this decision had rankled many on the board and the employees from the senior staff all the way down to the copy room. After all, a teenaged CEO spelled instability. 

There hadn’t been any as of yet; Tim, unbeknownst to anyone outside of the family, was actually well suited to this task. Far more than he, Dick, or even Cassandra would be. Jason couldn’t even begin to imagine Dick in this job. He’d hate it. 

With Johnson back in town, Tim’s assistant was absolutely positive that something untoward was happening. The two of them were working closely on various projects, pulling long hours alone, and Tim was still technically in Johnson’s preferred age group. The thought made Jason sick. 

“Thank you for letting me know,” he said.

“There’s nothing that can be done, legally or even with HR,” she said. “Nobody has ever made an official complaint.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Jason told her. “I’ll take care of it.”

00000

Jason watched Tim carefully across the dinner table that night. He was no Alfred but Tim liked Hamburger Helper just like any kid. He had known that from Dick. It was one of the few meals that Tim would eat any time, any day, no matter what he felt like. But that night, Tim just picked at his meal and nearly nodded off a few times.

“You alright, Timbers?” he asked. Tim didn’t even look up.

“I’m fine,” he mumbled. 

He wasn’t though. For the first time since Jason had met Tim, the kid went to bed instead of patrol. And when Jason checked to make sure the kid wasn’t faking and was still properly breathing, he found him passed out asleep. 

The first thing he did when he got down to the cave was call Dick.

“How’s it going there?” Dick answered.

“Fine,” Jason asked. “Got a case, though.”

“Yeah?”

“What do you know about Calvin Johnson?” Jason asked, deliberately being as vague as possible. “He’s a Wayne Enterprises employee.”

“Not much,” Dick said. “He used to oversee the interns. Timmy would talk about him sometimes.”

“What did he say?” Jason asked, curious, tone light. 

“Timmy hated him,” Dick said. “He tried to convince Bruce to fire him.”

“Why didn’t Bruce listen?” Jason asked, knowing that Bruce would have listened to anything that came out of Tim’s twelve-year-old mouth. 

“There wasn’t any reason to,” Dick replied. “Not even Tim had a concrete reason. He just kept saying that Johnson gave him the creeps. Little Wing, what are you working on?”

Jason wondered how much Dick knew about Johnson and the rumors surrounding him. 

“Not sure yet, Big Bird,” Jason said casually. “I’ll let you know if it actually means anything.”

They hung up quickly enough after that. 

00000

He got a text from Tim the next night saying he was working late at Wayne Enterprises and not to wait for him for patrol. Jason went to the office immediately, determined to get some sort of confirmation. Was Johnson a predator or not? He had to know. 

What he found, was horrible. He stepped off the elevator and watched Tim and Johnson through the glass wall of the conference room. The floor was empty; they thought they were alone. 

Jason could feel his jaw tighten almost painfully as he watched Tim's shoulders tense. The kid was too tired. He was freezing. He couldn't remember what to do.

Bruce had drilled it into them over and over again what a predator looked like. They knew what to look for and how to protect themselves and others. That was just part of the job. 

But even with all that training, Tim still froze and Jason had to sit there and watch the fucker tuck a strand of Tim's hair behind his ear as the kid stood there so still he looked like a fucking statue. Jason was across the hall and into the room almost before he knew what he was doing. 

"What's goin’ on here?" he greeted casually, his Crime Alley accent coming out in full force, one of the few ways his family knew when he was feeling murderous. Johnson looked annoyed; Tim looked like he'd never been more relieved to have a brother crash a meeting. 

"Hey, Jay," Tim said, shuffling papers around nervously, not looking at either adult. Johnson eyed Jason, who stared right back at him. 

"We should get going, kid," Jason said. "Alf has dinner waiting." It was a decent enough lie considering Alfred had gone to Singapore with Dick and Damian.

"We're supposed to finish these reports for the meeting tomorrow," Johnson told Tim, sounding as if he was reminding an errant child of the homework he still had to do. Jason didn't appreciate his tone. It wasn't respectful enough.

"You can work on that later," Jason said. "We gotta go." It took one brief look for Tim to know that there wasn't an excuse out there to get Jason to leave, not without Tim. The boy nodded. 

"We'll pick this up first thing in the morning," Tim said. "Good night."

Jason forced Tim to leave the room first so that there would be a solid wall of two hundred pounds of pissed off Jason between the man and the kid. He could feel Johnson's eyes on them through the glass wall as they waited for the elevator. Tim started shaking sometime around when he buckled himself into Jason's front seat. 

He started crying sometime during the drive home to the Manor. Timmy was a silent crier, never making a noise not even a sniffle or a hitched breath. When they pulled into the Manor garage, Jason put a hand out to keep the kid from getting out of the car.

"You know what I'm going to ask you, right?" Jason asked.

"Nothing happened, Jay," Tim mumbled.

"Then why are you so freaked out?" Jason asked. Tim wasn't a normal kid. He would have normally just put the guy through the glass wall and Johnson would have spent the next three weeks answering awkward questions in the hospital. 

Tim didn't answer the question. 

"Did something happen?" he asked. 

"I just don't like Johnson is all."

"I know," Jason said, moving his hand so he could clasp the back of Tim's neck, rubbing a thumb over the kid's hair. "Dick said you've always hated Johnson. Since your first internship back when you were little."

Tim rolled his eyes and sighed heavily, clearly annoyed. 

"That's because Johnson's always been a creep," Tim said, suddenly moving and managing to shake Jason off. He had to scramble to get out of the car and into the house before the kid disappeared somewhere. Jason caught his arm in the kitchen, drawing him to an abrupt halt. 

"Tim!" Jason snapped. "This is serious!"

"I know that!" Tim yelled at him, finally looking angry. "I know it's serious. You think I don't KNOW how fucking serious it really is, Jason?" 

It took quite a bit to get Tim emotional, especially as he'd gotten older and more closed off. 

"I have to know, Tim," Jason said, looking into the kid's eyes and knowing immediately what the answer was going to be before Tim even tried to evade the question at all.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Tim said, just as Jason had known he would. Even Tim didn't look like he believed it. 

All Jason knew to do at that moment was pull the boy into a hug, wrapping his arms around a shockingly bony frame, and just hang on. When had Tim lost all that muscle? Had it been when Johnson had gotten back to Gotham? Or had it been when Bruce died? How had none of them noticed?

"He's never been successful," Tim mumbled. "But he keeps trying and he's starting to get better at it. I'm scared." 

"I know," Jason said, pulling Tim that much closer. 

"He's been putting sedatives in my coffee when we work late, trying to make me sleep."

"Is that why you were so tired the other night?" Jason asked and Tim nodded against his chest. 

"I'm scared, Jason," Tim repeated. Jason couldn't even imagine what it must feel like to be Tim at that moment. Bruce was gone, Dick was training his own Robin, Alfred his backup and Jason was, well, Jason. And then there was Timmy; all of five foot nothing and too skinny, running the Teen Titans, sometimes running the family, and then running Wayne Enterprises on top of it all. Seventeen-years-old, twice orphaned, and even with all that training still so vulnerable to those who would take advantage of him. 

And someone had managed to find the way in. Late nights at Wayne Enterprises and a cup of coffee. If Tim had been anybody else, Jason would have been too late.

"I've got you, kid," Jason said. "Nobody can touch you when I've got you."

They stayed like that, just standing in the kitchen until Tim finally spoke again. 

"You promised me dinner," he said, cheek still pressed into Jason's shirt. Jason laughed a little.

"Yeah, I did," he said. "What do you feel like?"

"Pizza," Tim said. "The good stuff, not that nasty stuff Dick likes."

Jason laughed outright at that.

"I'll order you some pizza," Jason said finally letting the kid go. "Go change, we'll do a pizza and movie night."

"What about patrol?" Tim asked. 

"Fuck it," Jason shrugged. "We'll keep an ear out for alerts but neither of us is working cases or anything. We can hang out for a night."

Tim smiled brightly. It was the first real smile he'd had in weeks. They spent the night on the couch, eating greasy pizza and watching comedy specials on Netflix, laughing so hard that at one point Tim had tears in his eyes and Jason got the hiccups.

00000

Tim was still slightly drugged and only managed to make it to midnight before he passed out cold on the couch. Jason threw a blanket over him, snuck down to the cave, and suited up. 

As his fists connected with Johnson’s body over and over again, Jason started to feel a little better. The man was putty in his hands, soft, and easy to hurt. And, damn, if it didn’t feel good to hurt him. Jason beat the man almost to death. He stopped once he was certain that Johnson would never walk correctly again. 

It took him less than five minutes to find the photos Johnson had taken of past interns. He had never been so relieved to not recognize a single face. Tim hadn’t been lying to him. Johnson hadn’t gotten that far with him. He left the photos out, called the cops, and watched from a building across the street as Johnson was loaded into an ambulance, handcuffed to the stretcher.

Tim never said anything about it; Dick had only hugged him tightly, despite Jason’s protests; Tim’s assistant, however, kissed him on the cheek the next time he wandered into the office. 

And Jason started to keep a much closer eye on Tim, determined to make sure the kid didn’t drink any more spiked coffee.


End file.
